SOURCE: "Louis Wirth and the Chicago School of Urban Sociology: An Assessment and Critique," in Humanity and Society, Vol. 9, No. 1, February, 1985, pp. 1-12.

In the following essay, Smith delineates the particulars of the Chicago School of Sociology and Wirth 's model of the city, then discusses these in light of later perspectives in urban studies.

The city as a built form can .. . be regarded as a set of objects arranged according to some pattern in space. But there are few who would argue that cities are just that.

—David Harvey
Social Justice and the City

Introduction

Louis Wirth's essay "Urbanism As A Way Of Life," (Wirth, 1938:1-24) marked the beginning of conventional views in urban sociology on the relationships between the individual and the urban environment. Using the city as an isolated unit of analysis and claiming its study to be the sole province of sociology Wirth and...